


Useful (Like Iron in His Spine)

by blcwriter



Series: Write a New Alphabet [6]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF!Stiles, Cliffhanger, Dark!faeries, F/F, F/M, Faeries - Freeform, Gen, Hurt, Illnesses, Magic!Stiles, Medical Trauma, Mild Gore, Moar Finstock & Greenberg, Multi, Pack Dynamics, Pack Family, Pack Feels, Surprises, it's not a spoiler to say Derek is not in touch with his feelings and is kind of in shock, oh look a plot, the Beacon Hills Cross Country team did not sign up for this shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2012-11-15
Packaged: 2017-11-18 16:48:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blcwriter/pseuds/blcwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was bad. The whole cross country team was penned in by a dozens of some kind of fae, almost human-sized, slender, dark and crackling with creeping, weird magic. The kids all, somehow, had iron—pokers and fireplace shovels and things that looked like they came out of video games and in one kid’s case, a big frying pan, but they all still had iron, and Stiles was yelling, “Hold on to the iron, no matter how much it hurts, if you have the iron, they can’t take you away!” but he was clutching some tall, gawky kid (Greenberg?) who was pale and chalky and scared out of his mind and spitting out curses in what had to be fae with one hand as Stiles waved what had to be an iron shortsword another dozen fae, even darker and meaner, that had them penned in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Useful (Like Iron in His Spine)

**Author's Note:**

> Please note the tags. There is a serious cliffhanger, a main character injury/medical trauma that is NOT resolved in this fic, and Surprises with a capital S.
> 
> In other notes: action & gore, Stiles & pack bamfery, the action feeling a little condensed because wolves don't have a prolonged sense of narrative timeline, and Derek not being ready to deal with a wallop of feelings.

He’d been fingering the keys in his pocket—and getting the stinkeye from Finstock for whatever reason, not that the Coach wasn’t the king of the random stinkeye, some things never changed in this town—for the last ten minutes. Still, Isaac was doing well in the scrimmage and he wanted to be able to say he’d seen him score before he headed off to see the end of Stiles’ practice. Allison had already hopped down from her place on the bleachers, and was standing with him, also ready to go-- not that he supposed he blamed her—the metal benches would be cold to a human, and she, at least, seemed to understand that pack dynamics meant more than lacrosse. Jackson, however, had just tackled Isaac and Finstock had had to blow the whistle and stop the forward advancement, causing Lydia to boo her own boyfriend and the rest of the pack to mutter under their breaths about Jackson playing foul. Again. That tackle would have been fair in a fight, but not on the field.

They’d have to talk about Jackson’s sportsmanship. Again. Maybe he’d let Boyd handle it this time. Or Danny. Let _them_ gang up on the most junior beta.

Boyd’s own mutter about “pack foul, lizardbreath,” was pretty much in line with Derek’s own feelings, and he considered backing up Boyd’s reprimand when there was a sharp birdlike shriek two miles off—that, and Stiles’ howl, too faint for humans to hear. Though not the bird-shriek, which was not a bird, but Other, and had Allison and Lydia looking around. It was nothing Derek had heard, it was some _Weird_ of some kind. It sounded nearby to Stiles. Which meant—

Shit.

Allison and Lydia stilled even as every pack member on the field stuttered to a halt, just a second before Finstock blew his whistle, pale as chalk, yelled “practice is over!” and started to run for the woods.

Finstock.

Finstock.

Fins.

Stock.

Stiles said there were fae in the lake.

And the lacrosse coach looked pretty much the same as he had when Derek had been in school.

Goddamnit, he was the dumbest wolf to ever have lived.

The pack hit the edge of the woods, everyone shedding their extra gear, as he could hear Allison’s SUV engine gunning and Derek transformed, because faeries, and faeries living undetected right under Derek’s nose all this time, and Jesus, the unearthly shrieking, not just that bird call, but the taunts of something darker and shrill—he heard that, too, now, in his wolf form.

He howled back that they were coming, loud enough to announce a challenge to whatever it was that had prompted the calls in the first place. The pack picked up the challenge, baying, hot at his heels, Peter’s answering call from across town, so he’d probably deal with Argent, the sheriff.

Allison’s car horn blared out, every half minute—she might beat them, just barely, if Stiles’ amulets held, if he still had his phone, if all the various ways they had now of tracking worked and he was where the things that let him be tracked actually were.

Derek just followed his nose, followed Stiles’ scent, the smell of his blood, the sound of his pounding heartbeat, louder than the rest of the pack’s. He didn’t need magic—wings—to fly. Just the wolf.

\--

The human part of his mind could assess, along for the ride as it was with the wolf. 

It was bad. The whole cross country team was penned in by a dozens of some kind of fae, almost human-sized, slender, dark and crackling with creeping, weird magic. The kids all, somehow, had iron—pokers and fireplace shovels and things that looked like they came out of video games and in one kid’s case, a big frying pan, but they all still had iron, and Stiles was yelling, “Hold on to the iron, no matter how much it hurts, if you have the iron, they can’t take you away!” but he was clutching some tall, gawky kid (Greenberg?) who was pale and chalky and scared out of his mind and spitting out curses in what had to be fae as he slashed with a silver dagger, one-handed, clutched onto Stiles, who was wielding an iron shortsword. Another dozen fae, even darker and meaner, had them penned in. Stiles stabbed the sword like he meant business. He made contact, too. For once, Derek thanked the large and small gods for Argents.

Finstock—he wheezed, his breath bubbling and strange, as he took in the scene, skin a strange bluish cast as he watched Erica and Boyd, Isaac, circle the dark fae circling the track team just like they’d practiced for attacking groups. 

“Alpha, Alpha, please, get them down by the lake, please, I can’t do anything if it isn’t near water,” so Derek shifted to his beta form to make sure the rest of the pack knew, because Allison and Lydia wouldn’t get all of that in a howl.

They bit. Herded. Nipped. Broke necks. Jackson and Scott worked with him to draw off the fae attacking Stiles and Greenberg, then went to help the rest of the pack when there were only two or three left and the others needed help, still, with driving that group down the hill. The fae had silver daggers and swords that stung and leached power, but not too much, not as wrong as it should be for how many they were, for their size given how small fae usually ran. Not that they weren't a fight; they only bounced a small bit when you threw them unless Derek himself got in and bit down in just the right way. They tasted wrong, wrong in the same way Peter’s blood had when he had been alpha. 

Allison’s arrows helped a bit, but not much—she needed iron ones, ones he wasn’t going to ask Stiles to transform, not when it was clear for some reason that Greenberg was the target and Stiles’ hand on him and that iron sword was the only thing holding the dark fae at bay, though Greenberg kept stabbing with that little dagger. Awkward, but trying. Still, he wasn't going to ask for magic iron arrows, not when Stiles was clearly the one who’d conjured the weapons for the rest of the track team, and how, how, that conjuring trick, so much, from where? Iron was hard. You didn't make it out of nothing.

Lydia’s glass vials of something—glass and liquid—rained down from above. One of the pack must have gotten her up a tree-- and they broke on their slender attackers and gave the pack some pause, Finstock getting in on that action as the trees rustled, vials swinging on branches into Finstock's waiting hands as he babbled praise at the girl, half English, half faerie gabble, then turned to fling the ammunition at their attackers. Whatever was in the test tubes caused horrible screaming-- peels of skin dropped on the ground, purple-green blood pooling, bone or something else grey and stark exposed—but the fighting went on as the pack slowly herded the group down the bank, Stiles dragging Greenberg and stabbing at fae as he could, the dark fae snarling and cursing and stabbing-- biting- the trees shook and earth churned.

It seemed like forever, his pack bleeding from silver pinpricks and Argent shooting steel bullets with not enough iron to slow the dark fae for long, Peter howling something not-Wolf, not Singer, not Fae, the dark fae snarling when he joined the fight with one of Argent's own guns rather than rending like a wolf should. Fucking modern alloys. Danny at least darted in with a huge iron axe and beheaded some of the faeries like a berserker, all the while the track team reeked of fear and watched Stiles with wide eyes as they followed his orders to keep hitting these nightmares in daylight with household iron, iron that made their skin burn, that made them jump back and curse liquid before they poked in with silver again—unbelievable, and happening, and working, and so they believed, and Stiles’ voice cracked as he yelled at the kids to keep going, “Murder the goddamned faerie bastards, we were making awesome time, damnit, no, Sheila, hit him right in the ugly fae face!”

His human side catalogued all of that. No doubt he’d dream it all later in fully-developed detail. Adrenaline was funny like that-- pack magic was worse. For now, though, his wolf, the alpha, ascended. He growled and snarled and spat blood and dragged, cracked bones and tossed, threw and dragged bodies and howled orders and watched the finned one, the green one whose movements were both limber and wooden, the way they smelled of other but not like the dark ones, the ones armed with silver who would attack his human, attack in daylight, attack within territorial bounds, bounds marked in magic and blood—he howled his rage, and their sneers and snickering stopped as they fought harder, desperate now.

When water fae flowed from the lake to drag the dark ones under, the water boiling and the trees at the shoreline shaking, earth churning to mud under the feet of the dark ones, branches blocking the sun when the dark fae would surface, willow branches brushing the surface and clogging their mouths—his wolf sat on the banks and watched. Satisfied that the fight was ending, and for once not just because it was only his pack, his bitten-born defending this land and its people. His.

“Oh my god.” Well. At least Stiles was fine enough to stick with the clichés.

“Pretty sure he’s still got nothing to do with it.” He cracked his neck, ignoring the mud and the way the last of the silver slashes stung as they healed. Thank god some myths were just that.

“Aaaaaand the wolf’s still got jokes.” Stiles sounded exhausted, and Derek managed to look away long enough from the carnage still frothing the lake to check his human over.

Stiles forebore the scenting and wound inspection, that and a growl or eight at the fact that Derek did not approve of the slashes on his back and arms at all, no, no, he did not, but they were shallow and he had done all of _that_ one handed, because that Greenberg (was there such a thing as a male dryad? an ent?) he wouldn’t have been able to handle iron, now would he? His wolf growled, whether Derek willed it or not, because he’d known Stiles had always been skinny—some teenaged boys were-- and insecure about it (he could smell it on Stiles, even if he didn't understand), or as Stiles liked to say, he wasn’t a fan of the _rip off our shirts, rawr, shirts are for the weak!_ club. But-- he’d only gotten skinnier since running with the pack, the magic, being Derek’s second (his wolf growled even further, Stiles was not second), and Derek honestly had been _trying_ to get him to eat. Which was not easy, when your cooking skills were limited to takeout and microwave meals. But. He hadn’t known Stiles was this thin, and his skin was goosepimpling in the November cold. He needed to get Stiles a shirt. A hoodie. A fleece. A blanket. All four. 

Allison walked back into the clearing with a duffel smelling of medicine/clothes, the solid thump of it a weird counterpoint to the wet snarling going on in the lake. 

“How likely is it that their blades were poisoned?” Stiles asked, and he was looking at Greenberg—Greenberg and Finstock, who were sitting at the base of a willow and looking shell-shocked, but now not entirely human in a way that was neither just odd-looking or clumsy, but something having to do with both weird and glamour, even though they'd lost their respective brownish-green and blue undertones.

Finstock shot up and hurried over, then leant in and smelled—Stiles backed up, arms windmilling as he backed even further away, muscles flexing and elbow bones sticking, birdlike, out of his skin. Boyd was up in front of Stiles and snarling at Finstock even as the fae stood back, held out his hands. 

Stiles’ voice cracked. “Whoah, whoah, I already had the were-scan, what the hell is it with you supernaturals and personal space, I, just, check out the rest of the track team before I go Obi-Wan them, that or whomever your faerie queen is shows up and takes care of it, right, because I’m assuming that’s the way the rest of the story goes, since the cavalry didn’t show up?”

“For that, I apologize. Our Halls and your town are not in quite the same place.”

Derek wheeled to take in the approaching figure gathering light about her. Stiles’ heart stuttered, and he turned red, angry, his words to the fae harsh and clipped as she stopped three paces away. Derek’s dad’s voice was saying half-recalled things about faeries, rituals, promises, oaths as he watched her.

Stiles, though. Stiles was angry. “Madam, I will give you the credit of believing your good intentions in assuming that glamour. But I assume you also know the humans’ saying about where good intentions lead.” Scott let out a whimper.

The faerie blinked at Stiles’ words, clearly surprised—but then her face shifted from lovely (honey gold hair, caramel eyes like Stiles’, a heart-shaped face and sharp, pointed chin, pale face, freckles, oh, oh, _oh_ ) and instead, she was fair, fair and golden and green-eyed like a birch in both spring time and fall, and naked as the day an alpha ran through the woods, her skin white and glowing, mottled with black patches almost as if it was bark. The pack was quiet. Finstock and Greenberg seemed to be having trouble breathing.

“My apologies. My intentions were only well-meant. I met Agnieska more than once, when she was small. She was lovely, little and grown. She is missed.”

“Yes. Yes, she is. But her face is _hers_. No one else's. Hers.” Stiles said. He didn’t sound that forgiving. 

“I owe you my thanks,” the faerie replied, after a moment. Stiles looked her over, thinking, then shrugged. 

“They were attacking my friends. I had no expectation of a reward, no sense of any obligation, only a desire to be useful, protect that which I, alone, had decided was important to me.”

Peter whistled, lowly, under his breath, and Derek recalled, all of a sudden, something his father had said. _“Never accept a favor from a faerie. Never do one for them, either. They have odd ways of thinking about matters of payment, and their notions of time aren’t ours.”_

The faerie queen—for she had to have some kind of court, now that the fighting in the water had stilled, there were half-seen forms on the banks, coming more into this world because she’d merged her Hame with this one—nodded, as if Stiles was telling the truth, but then her gaze switched to Derek. And Peter. “It has been many years since I saw the Hale pack’s Singer, and you have changed. You have not walked amongst my hills since those changes.”

Peter’s heartbeat skipped, pounded, before it evened out. “I have been much occupied with the pains of this world, Lady,” he answered. “I intended no slight.”

She nodded once, then looked at Derek. “Your great-grandmother and I had an exchange, no further obligation than this. I and mine would keep the dark kin out of these lands, and she and yours would let those of mine who for whatever reason did not want life within the bounds of the Hame seek shelter here. And yet the dark kin have eluded my hunters and defiled your Merlin’s wards, Alpha.”

Greenberg made some noise that was like—what. A tree getting blown too hard in the wind? Stiles’ heart beat weirdly at that—and not at all at the usage of “Merlin.”

“Are there more dark kin, likely to come?” What the hell was it about faeries, that made everyone talk like Tolkien? Not that Derek didn't like Tolkien, but all those extra words were for books. Derek was a wolf of many growls, but few words, thank you.

She looked troubled by Derek’s question, and Peter’s heart pounded. Like he was worried. Great. It had been _quiet_ and now _Peter_ was worried.

“I will send hunters. With your permission, Alpha, they will make themselves known to you and your Merlin, patrol the territory with your pack and your Merlin, to ensure there are no more in hiding. With no further obligation, Alpha, I will teach your Merlin how to detect dark fae so that when the Hame veers, he and my bright kin whom you choose to allow to remain can defend until such time as we can return to assist in defending.” There was something there in those stressors, on his title and the one she was using for Stiles-- the possessive pronouns. Fuck. Fuck Peter and damn him to hell for all of this mess, all that Derek didn't know.

“My great-grandmother was a wise wolf, I’m told,” he agreed, because at least he knew that much. Still, it was his land, and her Underhill wasn’t always under Beacon Hills, and somehow, the dark fae had gotten in. He was going to be damned sure they didn’t again. “Lately, things have been settled. I do not feel the need to change anything, if things proceed as you say. ”

She nodded, and he could feel the faeries panting ease up behind him. Later, he’d have to pay Greenberg and Finstock a visit (could he make Boyd go with Stiles? Boyd didn’t get so bored with magic minutiae, but they appeared to be permanent fae residents, so the alpha should go the first time, but politics, ugh) and get the details of why, but for now the tension that wasn’t magic seemed to bleed out of the air. 

The queen turned her attention back to Stiles. “It is good for the magic, that there is one on this side of the Hame who can wield it in the old ways again.” She smiled, open sunlight, and walked off into the forest, the trees bending to shield her until she was gone. “Your non-pack friends will sleep well tonight and remember something less traumatic tomorrow. Their wounds will be healed.” Her voice faded into birdsong, and for a long, long moment, everything was silent but the splash of—Derek didn’t want to look—something in the water, and the sound of leaves in the trees.

Finstock’s voice cut across a weird lurch in Stiles’ heartbeat, that and a strong sugary, almost urine-like smell. “Bolinski, didn’t that damned vet tell you Merlins need to eat ketogenic diets? String bean like you, plus the whatsis, that ADHD shit...”

Stiles was just staring at Finstock, his pale, skinny, arms and chest (too much of it blood-streaked, too much of it turning to whip-cord, he was too young for this) twitching in the cold air, all the heat he’d been giving off just a few minutes before gone as his lower lip dropped open as Finstock started in on some kind of rant about brain waves and human metabolisms and magic—none of which registered with Derek because Stiles twitched harder just then, looking confused as he crumpled and dropped.

He didn’t twitch again when he hit the ground, he jerked hard, his limbs pulling taut and…

“Jackson, call Scott’s mother,” Erica snarled, breaking the cover she’d held and throwing herself over Stiles, pulling him onto his side. “Lydia, call 911, tell them someone’s having a grand mal, have them meet us at the gates, Allison, get me a goddamned blanket,” she went on, pulling Stiles’ head into her lap, as his body contorted, fell still, started all over again. Isaac and Scott hovered, Erica hissing and growling that there was nothing that they could do, that it wasn’t _pain_ , to stay the fuck back, get the fuck out of the way, they just had to wait until it had passed, and the ferociousness rolling off her was so feral that even Derek was almost scared. If there wasn’t something else to be more frightened of. Because.

Stiles.

There wasn’t any pull on the pack bond. Wasn’t any pull on the bond he had with Stiles, apart from just—blank, because it wasn’t magic, this, not pack, this. This was just human, frail. 

He bit back a howl.

Waited, let everything and everyone else fade even as part of him paid attention to Lydia—Boyd—organizing the track team, those confused girls and boys, talking to Finstock. Greenberg. Ignoring the water and tree fae, who had retreated back Underhill now that their queen had faded off into the light.

Derek watched Erica cradle Stiles’ head, fangs out, eyes glowing, claws in as she held him, crooned something to him about Batman. Waited until he could be useful. 

Tried not to hear Stiles’ voice inside his own head, because that was the word Stiles used the most, one tinged with the actonite purple bitter of hate.

Useful.

Waited some more.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm breaking my self-imposed rule of "don't ask for comments" but, um, here goes, because there have been a lot fewer comments the last few sections and I'm wondering. Aside from addressing (at least some of) the cliffhanger in the next series, does anyone have any comments? Questions? Remarks along the line of "Which LOTR book is Derek's favorite?" and "Has he seen the extended cut versions?"
> 
> (Fellowship, and yes. He has them burned on his laptop. PC. Macs are for pretentious *cough, Peter* geeks. And he watches them on his laptop. Which no one knows that he owns. Because Google doesn't like him, and Stiles is better at it.)


End file.
